Most of the posts here are really long, but good luck to you if you want to try reading them anyway.

Sunday, September 5, 2010

Last Class and Doggies (Last Friday)

So Friday was an interesting day.

After my usual morning routine, I went to the bank to deposit my allowance, which my dad had given to me in cash for some reason. While I was there, I also got my Maybank2u account reactivated. Apparently if you don't log in every three months or so, they'll shut you down automatically.

When I was walking back to my motorcycle from the bank, I saw my cousin Daryl leaving McDonald's. I asked him what he was doing in Bangsar and he told me that he had been working here for the past year. Apparently he works in the building just across from Devi's. He saw my mum and my brother eating there a few months ago but they said nothing to me. Nobody tells me anything. But yeah, it was cool meeting him.

I went to the KPD for my last Bahasa Kebangsaan class. I was half an hour early so I reviewed all my material from the past three months. When Ms Belinda arrived we got our marks back for our Tugasan and reviewed what the most important things for the exam were going to be. At the end of the class we got our overall marks. The highest was 42.5 out of 50, the average was around 35 out of fifty, I got 33 out of 50, which meant that I needed to score 17/50 on my final to pass.

After that class was over, and it was only 4:30, so we had finished two hours early. That was nice. Some of my classmates were waiting for the bus, I asked them what their scores were. Roy and Lee Kening both scored 25, and two other people I asked were only 2.5 and 1.5 points under me.

When I was walking to my motorcycle to go home, I heard a commotion behind me. I saw these two German Shepherds bounding around the place scaring everyone with their friendliness. It was quite funny, so I followed them around. They had collars, so I checked them for tags, but they didn't have any. A guard came up to me and told me to get control of my dogs since they were causing trouble. I told him they weren't my dogs, but I took them away anyway.

I spent the next few hours trying to help them find their owner. I wrote about it already but I'll repost the whole thing here in case the link ever stops working and I still want to read about it.

"As I was leaving class today, a couple of Alsatians bounded out of the foliage and started being very friendly with people. Most people did not take kindly to this. I thought it was quite amusing to see people freak out over the dogs, so I followed them into a bus queue. After accidentally inspiring fear into the crowd of pedestrians, they moved on down the sidewalk. I took some pictures of them while waiting for their owner to show up.

Doggies!

Male doggie!

Top of female doggie! Also shoes!

It soon became apparent that the owner of the dogs wasn't going to show up, and they were lost. They had collars, though, so I decided to check them for tags. First, though, I offered them my hand to smell. They were very affectionate and didn't act at all aggressive, so I moved on to a side rub, and then I examined their collars. Neither of them had tags, which either meant that they were unregistered or they were registered but without tags because they had identification chips implanted in their shoulders. They were happy, healthy dogs, so I assumed the latter, but without a scanner the chips were useless.

A guard came over to me and told me to get my dogs out of the area because I was creating a situation. I told him they weren't my dogs, but I'd try to use them. I managed to herd them away from the crowd and back where they came. It wasn't hard, all I had to do was grab the lady-dog's collar and walk her over and her guy-friend would follow. It was obvious that they were in this together.

Once the dogs were away from the bus queue and the main road, I had to figure out what to do with them. I couldn't leave them and go home, since they would go right back to the bus queue and annoy all the Muslims, who can't touch them, and the women, who are generally just scared of large animals. I couldn't call the police since their policy for stray dogs was to destroy them (they have these poles with nooses on the end so they can kill the animals without having to touch them), I couldn't call my parents because they wouldn't want dogs in our car or our apartment and besides our cat would probably murder them, and I couldn't call the shelters because I didn't have any of their numbers.

I tried asking passers-by if they knew the dogs, but nobody had ever seen them around before. I asked them if they had the numbers of any shelters I could call, but they didn't. I could only hang on to one dog at a time, so occasionally one would run up to someone and start sniffing them. The more frightened people were, the more excited the dog got. Soon I was telling people not to run because that he'd just chase them. He just wanted to play, but the way people reacted you'd've thought he was Cujo or something. It was quite funny to watch, though.

I realized I needed some kind of leash, so I wandered around with the lady dog until I came across an abandoned chair with police tape around it. I unwrapped the tape and strung it through a loop in the lady dog's collar. Her friend ran ahead and she trotted after him and I got dragged along for a bit until the tape broke. I restrung the collar with twice as much tape, and after that it was unsnappable.

LARGE DOG DO NOT CROSS

Now that I had a leash I could tie her down and call my brother to ask for the SPCA's number. He looked it up and gave it to me and I tried calling it, but nobody was answering. An American lady walked by and asked me if the dogs were mine and I said they weren't. She asked me if I knew where an ATM was and I told her there was one just around the corner. I asked her if she knew the numbers of any shelters or anyone who could help, and she told me that she hadn't been in the country long and the only number she knew was for the American embassy. I told her they were German Shepherds so the embassy might not be very helpful. We talked for a while and then she left to get money and wished me good luck with the dogs' owner.

After she left I still had no idea of what to do. Meanwhile, the male dog went and took a big shit in the middle of the street.

He is happy because he has just made himself king of the road.

I settled tying some of the police tape leash to a sign and waiting for someone to show up who either knew the number of a shelter or who had a phone that could go online and find such a number. I had plenty of time to wait since my class had ended two hours early due to it being the last class of the semester so the final was tomorrow morning.

I met a few people while I was waiting. There was a lady who went into her office and got the number of a shelter from the internet, but nobody picked up. There was a guy who stopped and told me that the dogs had been around since his classes started in the morning. He tried to help me figure out what to do while his friend stood a safe distance away because of the largeness of the dogs and the smelliness of the poo. He told me that it was very much a bad idea to call the police. Knowing Malaysia, they'd either not so up at all, show up and ask for a bribe before helping, or show up and kill the dogs anyway since it's simpler to just strangle them than it is to scan them and be stuck with the job of returning them to their owners over the weekend. Anyway, after telling me what I shouldn't do, he left with his friend. After him came a Chinese guy, Max, who noted who "taming" the dogs were. He called a friend who used to volunteer with animals and asked if he knew someone who could help. Meanwhile, I called various vets to find out if they knew the numbers of any shelters, but they either weren't picking up or they were out of the office and unable to help. I then met these two ladies who worked at the college. They got along well with the dogs, and the dogs got along well with them.

Max came by and said his friend knew a guy, Ka Lim, who ran a pet shop and that guy was coming over to pick up the dogs until the shelters opened again. Ka Lim said that he would be here at around seven o'clock because traffic was insanely heavy. It was around then when I realized the reason nobody was answering their phones was because it was Friday, and everything closes early on Fridays because the Malays have to go to the mosque or something. Anyway, Max gave me Ka Lim's number and then left to do whatever he was doing before he stopped to help a stranger with some dogs.

The ladies from the college left to go buy some food for the dogs. I hung around for a bit until some people emerged from a nearby office building and wanted to know what was going on with the dogs. Among them were two ladies who were friends with each other and also lived nearby. One of them, Maha, said she might have seen those dogs before since there was a guy who would walk his pair of German Shepherds past her house every so often. The other lady had two dogs and was experienced with rescues, so we were in good hands. She sent one of the guys from the office to go get some proper leashes from her house. In the meanwhile, I explained the story so far to them and they said that they could take care of the dogs until Ka Lim arrived. I gave Maha his number. She called him and she was told that the traffic was too heavy and he wasn't coming. So now we had to figure out where the dogs were going to stay while their owner was being located.

The ladies from college got back with two cans of dog food. One of them cut her finger when she was popping open the can. Someone from the office took her in to take care of the wound. Meanwhile the leash guy showed up, and the dogs were happy with their newer, more high-end restraints. After a few cautionary whiffs, the dogs ate their meals and were satisfied. After a while the lady from college who hadn't cut her finger went off to look for the lady from college who had, and the lady from the office who wasn't Maha called a friend with five dogs and a big house to see if her house was big enough for seven dogs.

The lady with the cut finger emerged and told us that she had fainted, but fortunately there was a guy from the office with her. The lady who wasn't Maha told us that her friend had plenty of space and was coming over now to pick up the dogs, but wouldn't be here for a while due to traffic. She then asked someone (probably the leash guy) to go up to the office and get a camera so they could make some posters to put up around the area. After that the lady without the cut finger came back and was reunited with her slightly woozy friend.

The one on the right cut her finger and passed out and the one on the left got lost looking for her. They haven't even been teaching for two years but they're already well on their way to becoming quirky professors.

The camera was brought down and some nice pictures were taken. Maha went to the office to print out some posters.

Time passed. Small talk was made. The male dog took another large dump, this time right in front of a parked car.

Maha emerged with a stack of posters. The college ladies agreed to put some of them up around the area when they came in for work the next day. They then went off to find a clinic that wasn't closed for a tetanus jab in case the can was rusty or something.

The lady with five dogs arrived with a large SUV capable of carrying dogs. We got the dogs in the back, and then I went to the front to take one last picture of the dogs with my phone. I remembered taking it, but it wasn't on my phone when I was uploading the images to the internet, which is both spooky and unfortunate because now I do not have a picture to end this story with.

So tomorrow there will be posters up all over the place and eventually the owner (or one of his friends) is bound to see it. He'll call the number for one of the office ladies who will direct him to the lady with a big house and five dogs, and there will be a happy reunion.

It's almost an hour past midnight now so there are a lot of things I've omitted and I might have messed up the sequence of events, so if anything seems odd or inaccurate just mention it and I'll try to clarify tomorrow after I pass my final exam. Also there was a strange guy who wanted to take one of the dogs for his own despite the fact that they got very distressed when they were separated and he only had a motorcycle for transport. Remind me to tell you guys about that, too."

Anyway after the doggies were safe, I went to McDonald's to have dinner. The guy at the counter charged me non-discount prices for my meal even though it was discount time, but I wasn't too upset because they accidentally gave me a McChicken that I hadn't ordered. I gave it to Jan when I got home.

After that I spent a long time writing about the dogs online, and then I went to sleep late and I woke up only three hours later.

I had thought I was going to write the dog story all over again in a different way for my blog since my blog is for a different audience, but it looks like I'm too lazy for that. Also I spotted some errors there but I'm not going to fix them until someone complains, which I don't think is going to happen.

Oh yeah also I might be attending one of Carmeni's lectures on Wednesday, just for kicks.

Anyway I'd better end this now so I can get some sleep. I've got an aptitude test tomorrow.

About Me and Stuff I Like and Such

I wish I was as cool as that picture makes me look. I like listening, reading, talking, napping, and eating. I also like girls, explosions, animals, things that are funny, and my friends. Oh yeah, I think writing is quite fun, too.